You might have heard of Romanian personalities, such as Nadia Comaneci or Tudor Giurgiu, however, there are many more Romanian personalities that are successful in their field, even though they are not known to the wide public.

One of them is Adrian Bejan, a Romanian professor who currently teaches at Duke university, where is a Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering. Bejan has also graduated university in the US, gained a master’s degree in 1972 and a Ph.D. in engineering at MIT.

During his career, he wrote 28 books and 600 scientific papers and he received 18 honorary Ph.D.s from universities from 11 countries. He has also invented the Bejan numbers which are used in thermodynamics and in convection. He was also a Math champion and a star athlete. Moreover, in 2001 he was listed among the top 100 highly cited in all engineering by ISI.

Adrian Bejan was born in Galati, Romania on September 24, 1948. His mother was a pharmacist and his father a veterinarian. They were both very supportive of Adrian and they encouraged him to pursue his passions. Thus, when he was a child they noticed that he liked to draw motorcycles at high speed and they sent him to art school for classes. This is when he learned about drawing using perspective and shadow. Art classes helped him later in engineering as he needed to create drawings and blueprints and it also helped him in thinking effectively.

He also became a member of the Romanian National Basketball team for three years. He studied at the Mechanical engineering university in Galati and on year II,in 1969 he left Romania to study with a scholarship at the MIT in the US. In 1975 he earned his Ph.D. in mechanic engineering and in 1984 he became a full-time professor at the Duke university. This is where he developed his theories, such as the constructal law.

The constructal law states that

For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.

Moreover, Bejan has changed perspectives on the theory of evolution. Adrian Bejan has also written about the human and machine species. His article published in 2016 states that:

Humans and technology are not in symbiosis. They are one species, not two. Humans, enveloped in artefacts of many kinds and ages (from writing, to airplanes), are evolving as one species, the ‘human & machine species’. This evolution is visible and recorded in our lifetime.